Skin and Bones
by MarauderCracker
Summary: Daltonverse. Jogan - Julogan - Light. Based on CP Coulter's Dalton. Story in 4 shots: we start after chapter 23, the Valentine's Fair Breakdown. English is not my natural language so I couldn't say is really good, but is spelled right, I promise.
1. Blood

Based on CP Coulter's Dalton. 4 shots. Songfic. Violence, smut, drama, whatever. I have a twisted mind, this will be an innocent chap, but don't expect it to be a quiet fluffy thing. It's T for the moment. Enjoy, and leave an RR if you may.

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><p><strong>Blood<strong>

Sometimes, Julian has nightmares. Till a couple months ago, he hadn't had dreams at all. At least, not that he remembers. Bout now, he dreams very often. And doesn't like it. He doesn't dream that he's naked in the street or that he's falling through some endless tunnel. That's a silly thing to dream about, really, he thinks.

He dreams about the letters. He dreams about the callings. He dreams there's an eye in each wall and the smirking voice of the stalker echoing everywhere. And he can't wake up, he just can't. Is like Morpheus wants to keep him in the nightmare.

He used to love to sleep. Even when he wasn't tired, he liked it. Stop thinking for a while. Earphones on and falling in a kind of coma from what nobody could wake him up. He knows people always dream, but when he woke up, all he could remember was a calm, black emptiness. His idea of peace.

But now he's scared of darkness, like he's never been before. He tries not to sleep. The stalker could be around and, even if he's not, in his dreams, he is. He closes his eyes and sees his signature written in blood in the back of his eyelids. His signature, he thinks of "him". Julian couldn't tell why he thinks about the stalker as "him", but he's got the feeling that it's a guy though.

"Julian, you've been a bad boy." The phone talks from the desk, the windows are giant eyes staring at him. "I told you… You cannot leave, my dear." The voice is soft even through the distortion. It's androgen, it has no accent, it's impossible to identify. It echoes in the room, makes the walls shake, turns his blood into ice cold.

"I told you so and I will repeat, honey. You cannot leave. I'm taking care of you, Julian. Just doing the best for you."

The walls bleed. From the back of the photos, from the frame of the window. The walls bleed and the red lines fall slowly, creating words in their way down. You cannot leave. You cannot leave. You cannot leave. It's falling faster, it comes from the roof, it's raining red. He feels the drops beating his head, sliding down his face.

He wakes up so suddenly it hurts. He would sight in relief, knowing it was just a dream, but he's breathless. He feels the cold sweat in his back, his heart trying to catch the rhythm back. It was all a nightmare, all of it.

All of it.

Or…

He feels the smell, the stink of roses and blood like it's in the room. It was not a dream. Not all of it.

He can remember. Packing up, throwing away all the photos of Dalton, leaving the uniforms in the empty room. A backpack and a small suitcase, nothing more. Derek saying "You should really go and tell him, you know." The curious look in a couple faces, a few "See you soon", the hall. "The car is waiting in the parking, you don't have to go with me."

When he opened the door, the lights from inside the house illuminated the steps and a circle of grass. And the blood. The blood like the principal actress in a play, in the center of the stage.

He can remember. The noise of the suitcase against the floor, the can remember. The smell of grass, blood, roses. He can remember the petals scattered all over the grass, and the picture in the middle. Even the feeling of the floor when he kneeled to pick up the photo, even that. He can remember everything. It wasn't a dream.

"Julian, Julian." Derek grabbed his shoulder, took the suitcase and brought him back in. The doors closed, but the smell of blood didn't disappear.

A small noise almost makes him jump off of bed. "Tab, honey, shut up." Derek is talking in his sleep, that's a normal thing. Julian tries to calm down. Why is Derek in his room?

It takes him a minute to notice that he's sleeping in the extra bed in Derek's room. He feels stupid. Yes, he doesn't want to be alone, he's scared. But letting Derek know is something stupid. He's not a child, he's not a girl. He's Julian freaking Larson, ok? And he will get up, get the hell out of Derek's room and go through the hallway to his room. He doesn't need a baby sitter to keep the monsters away.

"I'm not a girl, for fuck sakes." A noise downstairs (probably another study-holic Stuart), the tick-tock of a clock. He's two doors away from his room. Only two doors. You're acting like a paranoid kid, Julian, control yourself, he whispers to calm himself. One door, none. He's there. He knows his hands are shaking when he tries to find his key in the pockets of his jeans. It tinkles against the floor, Julian let's go a curse between his tightened teeth.

He uses the cell phone to light up the hallway, finds the key, tries to make it fit in it's right place. The door opens with a click, and he closes it at his back as fast as he can. After locking the door, he turns the light on.


	2. Bones

**Based on CP Coulter's Dalton. 4 shots. Songfic. Violence, smut, drama, whatever. Sex implicit in this chap. I mean, you can hear stuff, you can't see anything. **

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><p>Logan is lying awake on his bed, staring at the stripes of light that the sunblind draws on the ceiling. It must be past midnight, and he wonders why, for fourth night in a row, Derek is not in his room.<p>

At first he had just supposed that his friend had sneaked with any of his multiple girls, and was sleeping at Dobry, but every morning Derek appeared at time for breakfast, without waking Logan up at 4am to get the keys during the curfew. That was totally impossible. Like, totally impossible.

Logan is trying to figure that out again, when he hears the principal door of his dorm open. Someone's now on the Hall he shares with Derek, and Logan's room door is not fully closed. He hears someone mumble, and finally recognizes Derek's voice.

"C'mon, pick up, c'mon. Gosh, Jules, pick up the goddamn pho… Finally! Larson! Where the fuck are you?" Logan asks himself why is Derek calling Julian so anxious. Or why is Julian out of his room if he's supposed to be sick. Or why does Derek sound so worried.

"God, Julian, for fuck's sake. I thought you were dead or something. And you'll probably be if you drive back to school, as you sound. How much have you drunk already?" Derek is quiet for a few seconds, while Logan lies still, trying to convince himself that is not wrong to be listening to that conversation.

"You're not driving from Lima with that much alcohol on your blood, how can y…" Derek seems to have been interrupted. Logan hears him yawn. "Oh, much safer, right. An idiot driving and a drunk asshole in the passenger seat. You will both die. And, if you don't and you make it to school, I really, really, really expect you're not planning to…"

Derek sighs, Logan feels the impulse to move to be more comfortable but he doesn't want to make any noise.

"I was coming to my room to get some things, but as you seem to be perfectly ok again, and I'm not into that kind of stuff, I'll get back to yours to pick up everything I left there before you get here."

There's a silence. Long enough for Logan to get his ideas connected and figure out that Derek's been sleeping at Julian's dorm. Why in Earth would him do so, Logan does not have a single clue.

"Oh, that sounds like a good plan. As long as you use the bed I don't sleep in, bastard." Derek must have been the last minute walking around the Hall, because now Logan hears him open the door of his own dorm. His voice reaches Logan a little damped now, but he can still hear the most of the chat.

"Oh, really? That blond moron? Well. Turn the music on or something, Logan is sleeping and I don't think he wants to be waked up. He's pretty loud, you know?" Derek laughs at something Julian says and then talks again, while Logan asks himself if he have just heard what he thinks he's heard. "Whatever, Julian. I will just pick my Biology book and let the Hall book open. And you better let him drive, I don't want to find out that you crashed against something, ok?"

They talk a few words more before Derek hangs up, but Logan is not listening. He's still thinking this time he had heard pretty damn well, and Derek said "him".

Logan almost doesn't hear when Derek finally finds whatever he was looking for, closes his door and walks forward the hallway. It seems like he thinks about something, and he goes back. To Logan's door.

"Lo, are you awake?" Derek asks, but gets no answer. Logan knows he should say "yes" and admit he heard everything, but he doesn't feel like doing it. His throat is dry as a desert, and he really thinks his head is about to explode.

Derek closes the door before leaving, he can hear. Actually, he can hear almost everything. The campus is really quiet at night and Logan just lies in his bead, hearing as someone turns on the Coffee Machine in the first floor and the guy in the room above his drops a book to the floor when falling asleep. And, finally, after almost an hour of trying to find a comfortable position or convince himself that he did not hear "him" from Derek's mouth, the noise of a car engine.

Julian's got the keys of the school gates and Stuart's front door. Because he's Julian Larson-Armstrong, a million times more famous and influent than any of the other students on school, and if he says he needs them in case he gets back from Hollywood in a 3am flight, then he must have them. That's it. If the authorities of Dalton know or not that he uses it to go down to Lima and drink his ass off, that's not Logan's matter.

He hears the car park at the side of the residence. He hears steps, the chink of keys, the chirp of the door getting open. He wishes he had superdeveloped hearing, just to hear if it's only Julian who has just arrived, if he's talking. He hears the echo of steps on the stairs and knows they're two people.

The noise of someone stumbling, a laughter. It sounds like Julian. Logan knows everyone on Stuart must be trying to mentally kill whoever interrupted their study. Another stumble, they are in the hallway. Logan hears someone whispering but does not understand what the voice says. It's not Julian but he could not assure its genre.

"Here", Julian says. The door of the Hall opens. "This isn't your room." A guy says. Logan asks himself when the fuck he missed that Julian was bringing guys to Dalton to spend the night. Or spending the night with guys, no matter where. "It's a friend's. It's cool as long as we use the bed at the left."

Door opens, door closes. Another stumbling noise, a muted laughter, a moan. You should not be listening, he tells himself. He feels like some morbid bastard.

"Wait." Says Julian, words sliding lazy over his tongue because of the alcohol. Something that sounds like his heavy leather jacket hits the floor, steps pound all along the room. Finally, a couple clicks and music starts sounding. Not loud enough to bother the studying Stuarts but just as loud as necessary to soften the noises that make it past the walls to Logan's room.

The cymbals sound first, before the music begins. Just a few seconds of the beat alone before the voice enters. _I'm coming out of my cage and I've been doing just fine. _If Logan could force himself to name what he's feeling right now, he would call it jealousy. But he rather thinks it's just curiosity, just surprise; and can't detect the irony on the song that the random mode on Derek's audio system chose. Maybe it's just fate. _Gotta gotta be down, because I want it all._

Logan buries his face in the pillow and tries to get the music out of his head. He wants to sleep. All he wants in the world, in this right moment, is to sleep. _Now they're going to bed, and my stomach is sick, and it's all in my head… _And not to hear those moans under the song. Yeah, that over all.

The song ends, and in the short silence between the next one, Logan can hear the bed complaining about a sudden weight. _Come with me_ says the Killers' singer. A moan. Maybe the song is recorded like shit, maybe it just sounds naturally lower, but Logan now can hear a lot clearer the boys' voices. _We took a back road…_

"Wait, I don't know where D keeps the condoms." Julian says. "Hey, in my jacket." The other guy sounds sober and Logan can't avoid wondering how conscious Julian is of whom is he with. _(But I don't really like you.) _His doubt is soon cleared, as shoes and clothes sound against the floor. "I kinda missed you, Kev", Julian groans, the other guy –_Kev-_ moans. "I could say the same." He says. "But, being honest, I missed your tips." _Don't you wanna come with me? _The guy moans so loud Logan is sure everyone in the house could hear it. Everyone. It echoes in his head, and then he talks again, it sounds like his voice is breaking. "And this. Deeper. God, don't be a gentleman, just…"_Don't you wanna feel my bones, on your bones?_

Logan rolls to the side of his bed and looks blindly for the various bottles of pills on the floor. He knows them by their size. He also knows he should not take the ones for sleeping and his anger meds at the same time, but he wants to get some rest just as much as he wants to get up and go crash that guy's face against a wall. And the sedatives don't act so fast. _It's someone calling, an angel whispers my name._

He takes two of each one and lies back on the middle of his bed. Trying to close his head to the sound of the bed, to the moans, to the heavy breaths. And the music, _don't you wanna feel my skin on your skin? It's only natural._

He falls asleep before the song ends, his fists clenched and a heat on his body that nothing's got to do with anger.


End file.
